how do you guyz calculate shipping for a product when working with a ECommerce website ?
is there any webservice available from SA Post office ?
i m using asp.net 2.0 with sql server 2005 .. any help ?
Hi John,
Firstly, I would recommend getting a good courier company (Berco / Dawn Wing are good ones that come to mind / NOT FedEx (pricing is ridiculous)) to handle deliveries instead of the SAPO (they tend to "lose" too many orders, and the insurance on each package alone will kill your business model.
Secondly, most couriers have a fixed price matrix based on the distance from the location it is delivered from (based on zones e.g.: 0 - 50 km). This price increases as the "zones" or ranges from your location increases. I would recommend negotiating some sort of contract with your courier of choice for a discounted price over a fixed term. (I know for a fact Berco handles e-Commerce operations quite well, and have a discount model because of the recurring business).
Get a pricing matrix, then to really calculate delivery costs on your site, you would have to geolocate both addresses and calculate costs basing the price to distance on the base matrix.
This is the way some of the larger operations do it, but is by no means the only way of doing it.
Nucleotic.
"If you can't dazzle people with your intelligence, confuse them with your bullsh*t"